


veritas

by besselfcn



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Call Down the Hawk Spoilers, Having Friends And Being Gay Is What College Is About, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Ronan Lynch's Driveway of Terrors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 01:02:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21708757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besselfcn/pseuds/besselfcn
Summary: When Adam pulls back into Harvard campus, a text message that he knows is from Ronan has been burning a hole in his jacket pocket for the last two and half hours as he wobbled his way up the eastern seaboard.He finally, finally sputters to a stop and strips his gloves off with his teeth before leaning up against the bike to read it.It says:i’m sorry about the driveway.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 28
Kudos: 258





	veritas

**Author's Note:**

> maggie you can't give us something like A Driveway That Makes You Sad feat. Adam Parrish and expect us NOT to do this, right? RIGHT?
> 
> also i tried not to title my fic in latin but several crows broke into my home and screeched until their foul noise drove me to do it so take it up with them

When Adam pulls back into Harvard campus, a text message that he knows is from Ronan has been burning a hole in his jacket pocket for the last two and half hours as he wobbled his way up the eastern seaboard. 

He finally, finally sputters to a stop and strips his gloves off with his teeth before leaning up against the bike to read it.

It says: _i’m sorry about the driveway._

Adam feels lightheaded. 

He takes the helmet off. It helps a little. 

Before he allows himself to tap out a response (which would, in the moment, have been something like _don’t worry about it_ or _it’s okay_ or _shut up_ or something equally placating), he carefully locks the bike. He searches on instinct for the key that it doesn’t have. He stands back and admires it--the leather stitching, the shine of the metal, the places where paint ought to have been scraped off when he dumped it but where, of course, it’s pristine. 

Only Ronan, he thinks. Only Ronan would have made an invincible motorcycle but forgotten to include a motor.

Adam climbs the stairs two at a time and collapses into his bed. It’s dawn. Sleep is so close he can feel it crackling at the edges of his vision. But he pulls his phone in close to his face and writes, _it’s a hell of a security system. no need to apologize for creativity._

His eyes drift closed.

Buzz, buzz.

Ronan says: _i should have told you how to get around it_

Adam says: _the whole point was for it to be a surprise, idiot_

Ronan says: _when i made it, though. i should have told you._

Adam says: _the bike couldn’t have come through the trees anyway_

Ronan says: _don’t be obtuse_

Ronan says: _you know that’s not the point_

Ronan says: _take the apology or leave it_

(Adam can just picture him then, his mouth curled into a frown, eyebrows pinched together, hunched furiously over his phone with Chainsaw chittering away next to his ear. He’d laugh at the absurdity of the image, but for some reason, he sort of wants to cry.)

Adam says: _i’ll leave it. but thank you._

Adam says: _Tamquam_

Ronan says: _alter idem._

Adam is, as always, impressed by how much desire to keep arguing Ronan can pack into a single punctuation mark. But he sets his phone down, his alarm set for two hours, his limbs aching, his whirring mind settling down into a dull hum. 

At last, Adam sleeps, and tries very hard not to dream. 

-

“Oh, good,” Fletcher’s voice says, before Adam’s even really awake. “You didn’t fuck up my helmet too bad.”

Adam sits up and blinks at him, and then at the alarm that he’s apparently reset three times. He says, “Good morning.”

Fletcher scoffs. “Good afternoon. Have a good time with Mr. Tall, Dark, and Terrifying?”

He casts a look at Adam’s throat and shoulders, and fails to hide a smirk. Adam pulls the blankets up sharply around himself. He hasn’t thought to look in a mirror since he left the Barns. He’s now not sure he could handle the accumulated embarassment if he did. 

“Thank you,” he says instead. “For letting me borrow that.”

Fletcher tucks the helmet underneath his arm. “No problem. Don’t make a habit of it, though. Wouldn’t want to see your boundless potential wasted by…” He waves a hand.

“Love?” Adam offers, with as much of a biting twist as he can put on it.

“Dick,” Fletcher finishes. Adam rolls his eyes. “It’s okay. It happens to the best of us, once in a while. See you in calc.”

Fletcher turns. He starts to walk away. 

Something in Adam’s stomach twists, compresses, like a plastic bottle under too much pressure, making some awful creaking noise until--

“Fletcher,” he says. “Can I. Tell you something.”

Fletcher stops. 

He slowly nudges the door closed with a foot. “What’s going on?”

Courage is a funny thing. It likes to push Adam over the edge of a precipice and then dip out, just as he’s falling. 

But there is no good way to say _no, never mind_ , when Fletcher’s looking at him like that.

“Is it Ronan?” Fletcher asks, low and dangerous. Adam jolts. 

“No,” he says. “No. God, no.”

Fletcher nods. He looks--satisfied, but cautious. 

Adam has talked him down from this line of questioning before. After the murder crabs. Before the road trip. Fletcher always listens, and Adam’s grateful for it; he suspects Fletcher is smart enough to know that _boy who gets violent when drunk and trashes your dorm room_ somehow does not meld with _boy who thinks he is not in the Crying Club but sort of is and says I love you in so many words in Latin of all things._ He also suspects Fletcher is smart enough not to press for the truth, or to think that there is a singular one. 

“I just,” Adam says. He tries to approach it from a different angle. “Being back at home was. It.”

Fletcher is quiet. The whole world is quiet. He’s in Cambridge. He’s in Cambridge. This is a fact to hold onto. 

He says, “My dad used to hit me,” and through the fog of adrenaline rush that brings he thinks dully, _oh. I’ve never said that before._

“Oh,” Fletcher says. “Shit.”

Adam laughs, which is how he realizes he’s crying, which is how Fletcher comes to sit beside him and wrap an arm over his shoulders and rock with him as he explains. 

Some things are simple to explain. The subjective truths. I lied because I didn’t want you to pity me. I wanted to feel like a human being and not a court case. I know you wouldn’t think less of me but still, but still, but still.

Some things are harder. The facts. The stories. A trailer park. A church. He’s in jail now. I wasn’t born deaf. 

Adam isn’t sure if he’s remembering what happened or if he’s remembering remembering--the echoey haze of concussion in his own memories and the phantom pain that rocketed through the side of his head as he sped up the driveway to the Barns all feel the same in retrospect. 

“I’m sorry that I lied,” Adam says, and then, in contradiction: “Please don’t tell the others.”

Fletcher exhales. “Look, it’s your story to tell, not mine,” he says. “But you know they won’t care, right? I mean, they’ll care, but not like--I mean, you know what I mean.”

“I know,” Adam says, and does not say, _which is the whole problem_. 

But Fletcher is Fletcher, and Fletcher is smart enough to see who Ronan is, and smart enough to lie about it, and smart enough not to ask Adam why Adam lies about it, too. 

“Okay,” he says. “Thanks for trusting me with that.”

Adam shrugs. but he nods. “You’re gonna be late,” he reminds Fletcher, nodding towards the clock.

“Ah, fuck,” he says. “Okay. See you.”

Adam smiles. His chest hurts, but in a good way, like a hug that’s too tight. “See you.”

Fletcher leaves. 

He comes back, a second later, but just his head peeking around the door frame.

“I would strongly advise you to find some concealer before you go out in public,” he says, and Adam throws a crimson-embroidered pillow straight into his smug, laughing face. 


End file.
